Leaf blower fight - Round One: noise. Round Two: emissions

Nov. 24, 2006

Written by

Debra West

Since the moment that the gas-powered leaf blower was introduced in 1970, governments have been trying to outlaw it.

The anti-leaf blowing movement started in California, where the City of Carmel enacted the first ban in 1975.

It took a while for leaf blowers to reach their annoying crescendo in this region. But during the1990s, the irritating nuisance with its ear-splitting whine became a flash point for debate in the Lower Hudson Valley, too. Setting neighbor against neighbor, rakers against blowers, and do-it-yourselfers against those who paid to have their yards whipped noisily into shape, the leaf blower-wars even led to a crime or two (a murder in Yonkers, an assault farther north).

"The noise level is way too high," said Barbara McPartlan, a homeowner and determined leaf-raker from Elmsford. "It's unsafe for the people who use them, and those of us who don't have to suffer too. It seems one neighbor starts and stops, and then the next neighbor starts and it just goes on and on."

While landscapers and homeowners alike found increasingly creative uses for leaf blowers: removing leaves in the fall, clearing away grass clippings in the summer and cleaning sidewalks year round, residents from Hastings to Haverstraw demanded their governments take action to restore peace and quiet to the suburbs. And one by one, municipalities in this region adopted noise ordinance laws that restricted blowers' use.

Piles of restrictions

More than a dozen communities in the Lower Hudson Valley now have some kind of leaf blower restriction on their books. Depending on the town, there are bans on the season of year (not in summer), time of day (not before 9 a.m. or after 7 p.m.), or day of the week (never on a Sunday) that they can be used. One village even limits the number of leaf blowers that can be used on a single property (no more than one at a time).

Now that the dust from those battles has settled, there is another new reason to vilify leaf blowers: They contribute to global warming.

The gas-powered leaf blowers churn out as much pollution in 30 minutes as a car driving 2,000 miles will, according to Andrew Neuman, a senior assistant to Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano.

Westchester is now proposing a countywide law that would require landscaping contractors to begin switching to cleaner leaf blowers in 2008 and to use only the cleaner ones by 2009. As far as anyone can tell, it would be the first law of its kind in the country, said Neuman, who came up with the proposal.

"I saw the California proposal, and I said this is a good idea," Neuman said. Earlier this year, trendsetting Los Angeles offered a $200 incentive to landscapers who were willing to trade in their older, more polluting models of leaf blowers for newer lower-emission models. The program took 1,500 old leaf blowers off the lawns and kept an estimated 10 tons of pollutants out of the air, Neuman said.

The lawn wars

Westchester didn't have a pot of money to give away as an incentive and so decided to rule with the stick instead of the carrot. The county's proposal would require landscapers to buy equipment that emits only 45 grams of hydrocarbon per kilowatt hour or face fines of up to $1,000. The county will replace its own fleet of 160 leaf blowers during that time as well.

Not surprisingly, this has sparked Round Two of the leaf blower war.

"What's next? Weed whackers? Hedge clippers?" asked Joseph Tinelli, president of the New York State Turf and Landscape Association. "Our concern is that they start with leaf blowers and then they go to the next level. It's getting a little out of control. Landscapers have more rules and regulations than doctors do today."

Tinelli wonders why the county government is getting in on the emissions-control act.

"We have to do something about environmental concerns," Tinelli said. "I'm not opposed to that. But the federal government does that with the manufacturers. Why go after the people who buy the equipment?"

The federal government is also upgrading its leaf blower emission standards. As of Jan. 1, it will require manufacturers to sell less polluting equipment, but the federal requirement is less strict than the county's. It sets a limit of 50 grams of polluting gases per kilowatt hour, while the county's proposed limit would be five grams less. Old leaf blowers with two-stroke engines (most now have four-stroke engines) can emit up to 25 percent unburned gasoline in their exhaust, Neuman said, noting a study by the Air Resource Board of the California Environmental Protection Agency.

Landscapers unite

At a meeting of Westchester County's environmental committee this week, landscapers came out to protest the new restriction, saying the data the county were using were based on outdated equipment that is rarely used anymore.

If Westchester County's own equipment is any measure, however, the dirty old-style leaf blowers are still very much in use. Many of the leaf blowers in the county's own fleet have big-polluting engines that date back to the 1980s, Neuman said.

But passing laws is one thing. Enforcing them another. Tinelli estimated that there are 7,000 landscapers in Westchester County alone. His organization, however, has heard of only a handful of contractors who have gotten tickets for violating the various town noise ordinances. It's not necessarily because the contractors are being compliant. With a hodgepodge of noise ordinances that vary from town to town, it's hard for landscapers to keep track of what is legal in each town at different times of the year, week and day. The low number of tickets might just mean that the leaf blowers are fast.

"They do it quickly and they do it minimally," Tinelli said of the rule-bending leaf blowers. "At first police gave tickets on a regular basis. But eventually, it relaxed and now police just come in response to a complaint. They don't have enough manpower to cover 7,000 landscapers. Plus, it's not manslaughter, it's leaf blowing."

Tell that to Clunie Bernard, a pharmacist from Yonkers, who is serving 20-to-life for killing her 74-year-old neighbor, William Taino in 2000. After a long-running argument over leaf blowing, parking and snow removal Clunie came after Taino with a pick ax one day while he was blowing leaves off his lawn. The pick ax went clean through the leaf blower but she didn't stop there. She ran over him with her car.

Thankfully, most leaf blower rage is not that extreme.

Debra West, a member of the Editorial Board, has been writing about the Lower Hudson Valley for almost 20 years.